Monthly Archive: March 2011

I’ve just uploaded a neat little article (if I do say so myself) on the various risks of bonds and what happeneded during the GFC. Its more of an education piece and if you’re interested in a read please click here. Send article as PDF

Source: van Eyk, Morningstar The above chart contains some performance statistics of a list of Australian share funds with at least a 5 year track record and were awarded an A-Rating by van Eyk this month. The A-rating is the second highest possible rating van Eyk award with the highest being AA…no Australian share fund achieved an AA …

Source: Bloomberg The above chart shows the movement in the ASX200 over last week. It closed before the Japanese earthquake on Friday 11th March on basically the same level ot closed on Friday 18th. Given the market is slightly up today (0.35% at the time of writing) means that since the earthquake the Australian market …

As expected the yield curve is much flatter than the last couple of months but nothing too dramatic. The Japanese tragedies will have an impact on global economy as well as its own but it is more likely to be a short term negative impact that will possibly turn into a growth story later in …

Source: www.macrobusiness.com.au Found the above chart on the brilliant Australian blog, www.macrobusiness.com.au, and its quite a frightening picture indeed. As the headline says, “at no time in the last 200 yeasr have commodity prices risen as fast and as high as in the last decade without a sharp decline”. When you throw in the fact …

My favourite investmnent returns report was released yesterday by Standard and Poors, their SPIVA Report. Its my favourite because unlike other investment return analysis/reports, this report takes into consideration investment fund survivorship. As many of us know, when an investment fund continues to underperform it typically closes never to be seen again and the reports …

I haven’t posted too often this year and the above chart pretty much shows why. This year, there hasn’t been too much change a not a great deal of interesting things to write about. Despite natural disasters, minority government, middle east issues, record food prices and climbing oil prices, our bond yields have been relatively …